Using Flickr to Reduce Bandwidth and Get More Traffic at the same time
I Googled my site’s name the other day, and found something very interesting. On the 1st page, the 4th result was a URL from Flickr?! Someone liked my Free Glass RSS icons, took a screenshot, and uploaded it to Flickr with a link to my site in the description. View it Here >(Thank you, whoever you are!) Granted, this site hasn’t been around all that long, but I was truly amazed that this page was ranked higher than a lot of my own, but hey, I’m not gonna try to understand it. How bout we just roll with it and try to see the bright side here?
The first thing that crossed my mind was SEO. “If ONE Flickr picture labeled with my url ranks well on Google, why not upload some more?” The second thing that crossed my mind was “Wait. Is that going to be considered spam? Uploading a bunch of pictures with links to my site.”
I thought about it, and I can see how this can be used in a non-spam way. One word: Bandwidth. Let me begin by saying that BittBox was “dugg” into the dirt at the same time I was transferring it to a new server (AHHHH!), which was not only a huge unfortunate coincidence, but also hugely annoying to diggers, and other social bookmarking visitors. I have a terabyte (100,000.00 MB) of bandwidth/month but the quickness of a frontpage social barrage of visitors can do some serious damage on the short-term, no matter your monthly bandwidth allotment. Lets say that your site gets dugg, and the story/post is mainly some hi-res pictures. This would be a perfect excuse to host the hi-res version on Flickr. Your story could house the thumbnails or previews as a collection, and point your visitors to a Flickr gallery to view the entire collection, or one at a time if you like.
I see this as a double positive. First, your server doesn’t have to handle the data transfer of your visitors that want to view your hi-res images. And second, you now have a gallery/image on Flickr for any of the millions of their visitors to find, and possibly visit your site. This is another way to take advantage of tagging. On Fickr, you can put any tag you want on your images. This makes me think that the more unique, or focused your topic or image is, the more likely you are to be discovered on Flickr.
Here is an example of hosting your full size image on Flickr?
I tried using standard HTML to display the link back here, but it didn’t work. So I just put the full URL in the description, and it worked. I’m not sure if there is another way to do it or not. I really don’t use Flickr very much.
The one bad thing I can foresee is that you run the risk of social bookmarkers finding your Flickr gallery/image BEFORE they find your article/post. Then all of your visitors bypass you, and go strait to the source. So be careful on how you engineer this if you try it. Man If you could only put your ads on your Flickr pages? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Yeah, Right. Rewarding the users that get them traffic. Never!
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Hey man, interesting post. I’ve been looking at your graphics for a little while now and am tempted to use some of them on my website. Not sure yet though as I haven’t decided on a color scheme.
Whatever, it is a good point you make about SEO. I’m still trying to get my site to show up on Google! Not that it’s really ready yet……
thnx
Great post!
To leverage traffic to your own site plus client sites through social networking is a growing trend.
Agreed that this can drive traffic away from your own sites however it is an interesting opportunity? to propel a humble site to overnight stardom!
Bluhalo
Hi
U can also use deviantART to show ur works in hi-res for download. IMHO dA is better, bcoz u can easily setup CC (http://creativecommons.org) and link back to BB is more visible than on Flickr.
And u can monitor how many ppl downloaded it etc.
And one big advantage is, that dA is oriented on graphic. So more ppl could use ur great works ;)
I find DeviantArt disgusting and repulsive, just because of it’s interface. However, there is a ton of good content on there. I agree with you on the fact that it is a very focused audience, which definitely has it’s advantages. Not to mention the free hosting of your files and images.
~BittBox
thats because your blog has really quiality content.
Test myfunction comment
Thanks..
http://www.estetik-merkezleri.com
As far as driving traffic to your website, this information is 100% wrong.
Google Image search will not rank images hosted on Flickr as high as self hosted images.
Do a search for common keywords on Google Image search and see how many are from Flickr.
If you have a Flickr Pro account, compare the referrals you get from Google compared to yahoo.
I’ve personally compared traffic for similar photo blogs who host of Flickr vs self host. The self hosted sites gets two orders of magnitude more Google traffic. (that is 100x more).
Check where Flickr ranks as a referring site in your traffic stats.
On every metric, Flickr fails. Even if you are popular on Flickr, that does not lead to traffic to your website.
Very interesting. Do you run your blog as a full time thing? I’ve been dying to bring transition over from working for someone else, and making sites for them, to working on my own site(s) 24/7.